Six good lessons from HuffPo's success

As the Huffington Post approaches its fifth birthday, it has broken into the top 10 US news sites and its unique visitors are up 94% in the last 12 months, with a little more than 13m uniques in March.

Ken Doctor, in his weekly posting at Nieman Journalism Lab, notes: "That's quite an achievement, both for a site that young and for one that employs only about a hundred people." So, he asks, what can we learn from HuffPo?

1. Don't forget the intangibility of brand. In HuffPo's case that's the straightforward progressive political bent of founder Arianna Huffington.

2. Don't overpay for content. HuffPo could never be accused of that.

3. Embed yourself in the social graph. As ceo Eric Hippeau puts it: "We're one part social network, one part news content site." Doctor asks: "How many traditional news sites think that way?"

4. Niche, niche, niche. HuffPo is now in four cities, has topical HuffPosts around interests such as books, and just launched a college site. But all keep that HuffPo feel.

5. Grow when others are cutting back. The site doubled its staff in 2009 - the year of the great recession - using new investment to move close to 100 employees.

6. Play pinball. HuffPo has expanded by "offering more and more like content to more and more like people; it's a constant experimentation, but all in the direction of more."

I think these are excellent lessons for all news website start-ups - though journalists do need to earn money for their efforts.